The PS3 console is too expensive and is losing market faith, claimed senior analyst for Ovum, Carl Gressum, as the console hit the European market at midnight last night.
“Sony has gone from being the king of consoles to face stiff competition in a market where for the time being it has been side-tracked,” said Gressum.
However, Niall O’Hanrahan, managing director of Sony Entertainment Ireland, said that Ireland has greater PlayStation penetration per head than any other Pal (European tech standard) region.
O’Hanrahan said that the launch of the PS3 was the biggest of its kind in Ireland, adding that of the two million units available for sale in Europe, 20,000 were allocated for sale in Ireland.
But Ovum, an ICT analyst firm whose clients include Fortune 500 companies, said: “The cat is out of the bag.”
Gressum claimed that Sony need to focus on “getting costs under control and bringing down the price point of the PS3. There is no secret that Sony is losing money on every console that is sold.”
When Sony released the PS3 in the US last year, just 195,000 of their expected sales of 400,000 units were sold in the first 13 days, according to the NPD Group, which tracks video game sales.
In contrast, Nintendo’s Wii console sold 476,000 units in the same period, according to NPD.
Gressum claimed that Sony needed to re-establish confidence in the market. “The market is losing faith in the PS3 because of the market competitiveness.”
He claimed they could re-establish this confidence by “bringing down the cost of the Blu-ray drive”.
The recommended retail price of the PS3 is €629.99. Nintendo’s Wii is retailing at RRP €269.99 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has an RRP of €409.99.
By Marie Boran
